


Before the Legend Began

by Darkslover



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fantasy, Gen, LITERALLY, Original Mythology, Science Fiction & Fantasy, The Black Lion is a Queen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 04:54:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12425418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkslover/pseuds/Darkslover
Summary: What is Voltron? How could a comet full of Quintessence have sentience and be aware of its name? Where did it come from? Let’s find out.





	Before the Legend Began

_“ A sharp blade…_

_Shining armor…_

_An army to lead…_

_A planet to rule…_

 

_You had everything, once._

_You gathered your forces to the plains of Arkadia to face your biggest enemy, the plague that destroyed your sister planet in a wave of power no one in the galaxy had seen before. An ancient evil, forever consuming souls, forever enslaving minds. Despair followed its steps on your land and you stood against it, a Queen and a fortress for your people, hundreds of thousands of your followers stood by you in the plains._

_Your parents ’ gifts to you gave you confidence, as always; your mother’s magic and wisdom, your father’s gauntlets and strategic cunning. You had sharpened your mind and your skills through thousands of battles before and you knew: that was the big test. Everything you and your most trusted companions had gone through led to that moment._

_Your companions… they had your trust and you had theirs. They were four and you had forged your bond with them through the fires of battle, the winds of adventure, the rains of fate and the lands of mystery. You had them by your side at that moment of truth, ready to die for you, their Queen and leader._

_Yes, indeed, you had everything. And love, yes. You had love. A love strong and true, passionate and devoted. He was there as well, by your side. His magic powerful, his soul tied with yours. You imagined your long life after this battle with him, your Queen consort, your one true equal in power and in mind._

_How betrayed you must feel by fate, Fala… Your armies fell, your companions died, your love sacrificed himself to save your life… and you lost even this, as well, rendering his spilled blood pointless._

_You had everything and so it was everything that you lost in that battle and not by even your enemy ’s design, or your lack of foresight . The bitter poison of sadness that your father had consumed after your mother ’s passing had blurred his mind so much that he thought that he was somewhere else, sometime else… and he attacked you, seeing in your power the one that had betrayed your family and took his beloved wife away._

_So betrayed…”_

\--

 

“You can say that again, Lady Aertes. Why should I care now what will happen to the world, after what happened to me? What is the price that I must pay? For what?”

“I understand your rage, Fala. And really, you can refuse the call. It’s ultimately up to you to decide whether to stay in oblivion for eternity, or have your spirit travel the universe, in order for the great evil you faced to be countered.”

“Wait… the Miasma? It’s this what it’s all about? It’s moving again?”

“It never stopped, Fala. Your sacrifice had indeed taken it out at that time, but it was temporary. You halted it for 100,000 years, but yes, it’s moving again.”

“So… that’s it, then. I must return to try and vanquish it for good. And why should I care? After all, I was ready to do it back then and fate led me here. So tell me, Lady Aertes, why should I care? I tried, I failed. Let someone submit in its cruel whims!”

In the imagination of Fala’s people, the being that ruled over the Universe had the name “Lady Aertes” and was a blind, horned woman. To all sentient beings, that being existed and had different shapes for any religion that bothered narrating its shape. It was One and it was All, it was the World and You and I and No One. It ruled over the universe, yet it was ruled by it. It was above any soul, yet all souls contained it.

And at that particular moment in what mortals called “time”, a blink in eternity, Lady Aertes had taken the form that Fala always thought her Goddess had: platinum hair, long and straight on her back, a black chiton on her shoulders that fell around her feet and disappeared into the void of the universe around her, black talons on her fingers, stars on her skin and eternally crying tears of any colour from the horns that had their roots on her cheekbones, continued up her face, twisting and bending like the branches of a tree above and behind her head.

Lady Aertes simply smiled, looking down at the small, glowing sphere between her long fingers. It glowed the colour Fala’s soul had since her birth. Nothing could change the nature of a soul and Fala’s was, undeniably one of a leader, of a queen. The Goddess of the Universe knew that many things had changed since Fala ruled; no one knew that the great warrior queen ever existed anymore. But, they knew her soul.

Of the many things that had changed, the spirit of a leader, not one made by blood, but of the spirit made and created by nature and nurture had remained the same colour as ever; a bizarre thing to survive after so many eons. She smiled at the purple sphere, unique in its own way.

Whoever of her subjects committed suicide, had their soul hardened in a sphere. They were doomed to a long isolation instead of having their Quintessence join the flow and await reincarnations in the time that was yet to come, or had already passed. Their lives were not their own to sacrifice, after all; they all belonged to her. And using them to their own ends was punishable by eternal wandering instead of reincarnation.

Cruel might it have sounded to mortal ears, Lady Aertes had her reasons for doing what she had done. Her rules, after all, existed only to combat the Miasma from exiting its plane of reality and spreading to the others, like the plague in the blood. The eternal flow of life and death throughout the universe had to continue existing, so as to create the barriers between realities and trap miasma in its reality. It’s already devastated, devoid of any life reality.

But, for every barrier, every shield, a sword, a lance, an arrow must exist. Those who took their lives weaponized it for the fight against Lady Aertes’ eternal opposite and enemy, even if it wasn’t in their intention to do so. Their Quintessence contained forever in their soul sphere, only simmering with memories, with introspect, forever growing in age, like the fledgling in the egg, until, hundreds of millenia later, Lady Aertes saw them ready to burst. It was the time of their calling to arms, their existence no longer being able to be contained in their sphere.

And Queen Fala of the planet Ravine was left more than 100,000 years in isolation, with only her already 1,000-year-old life to remember till the smallest moment came back to her clear as if she was living it at that moment. She was finally ready.

But, Lady Aertes was fair, if nothing else. After all, her rule had always been one of balance; sacrifice something to gain something else of equal value. And among the gifts she had bestowed to the sentient mortals, free will was one they and she cherished the most; for it was the driving force of the Fates, whom even Lady Aertes bowed to. Such a being of unimaginable power was she, but her place was simply a link, a lynch between two forces that shaped the Universe: the will of the mortals and the Fate that decides and is decided by it. In their neverending cycle, no one can say which came first, but their co-existence was absolute. The choices mortals made decided their fate and the Fates brought forth the moments where mortals had to make their choices. This perpetuation was to never be stopped.

Until the Miasma appeared and threatened to take it all away.

And thus, knowing already all this, Lady Aertes bestowed her rule: any soul that was to take its life was to never join the flow of Quintessence between realities intact. After all, what place did they have left, if they had decided to take the gift Lady Aertes had given them for themselves, but their own self? What was their choice, but to build a shell around their souls and cut themselves from the others? So, their souls came to her, forever hardened in a sphere, left to ripe until one soul became a Universe itself and then…

And then the Calling had to happen. These souls were to become the piercing weapons to fight against the Miasma in a myriad of different ways, so as to drive it away from the barriers and keep it at bay.

But the gift of free will was not to be denied; Lady Aertes would not contradict herself. For all the catastrophe it called for, one soul had all the right to deny her Calling. They could say no and Lady Aertes would leave them be; she was, after all them and they were her. The consequences were dire; a Universe’s worth of Quintessence would be lost forever, the soul sphere would shatter and all its power would join the barriers, but forever scattered, never to be reincarnated, even if their were among the ones who were in their way to be so. Just threads of walls between realities, no consciousness. And the mortal plane would lose a potential weapon to face the Miasma with, maybe the key weapon in this eternal war.

Yet, despite the cost, Lady Aertes would let them choose. And she would do as they said.

 

Queen Fala’s soul stood before its Calling, before the big choice. Myriads of lives would be decided on her decision, but, like all souls before her, she never thought of that when she decided. One soul, no matter how powerful, was just one soul, after all. And after the millenia of isolation, for one to think about the souls out of its shell… that would mean that this soul was not just powerful; it was worthy to be the weapon to defend the Universe against the Miasma.

“So, Fala… is that a no? Do you refuse the Call to become a Defender of the Universe?”

“I tried to defend my planet and look where that got me!”

“If it’s death you’re afraid of, then there’s no reason for you to; you are already dead.”

“I’m not afraid of death. At least… not of mine.”

“The death of others, then.”

“The death of the people I care about. They’re all gone. They were the reason I fought for. Why return?”

“Who knows… maybe curiosity? Just to see where the pebble will land in the puddle? Where the drop will flow through on its way down?”

“Curiosity? No ...It is boredom that has me considering your request..”

“Boredom, it is, then! Hardly a glorious motive… but, many a miracles and disasters have happened for even pettier reasons. Very well, then. Out of boredom?”

“I suppose… yes!”

“Excellent!”

Lady Aertes dropped the soul sphere at her feet, where four others, a red one, a blue one, a green one and a yellow one floated around in space. Once Fala’s joined them, they all converged to hers and smashed together, their Quintessence spilling and a new shell forming all around them, now uneven in shape and rocky in its texture. It solidified all around them, closing them in and then, the light of their souls vanished, trapped inside. It was but a pebble in size compared to her, even though any mortal coming across it would think of it as enormous.

“I never said you would do it alone, Fala. Even a Queen needs her companions in a fight,” Lady Aertes smiled. There was no need to peek inside the tiny rock at her feet to see how shocked, elated and maybe even nervous Fala felt when she joined her old companions in one single shell; they all came from the great Goddess; she knew everything about them.

“Well, then,” she raised her head, looking eternity, chaos and a plethora of Universes all around her. “In which reality should I send you, brave warriors of Ravine, to gain a new shape and restart your battle against the Miasma?”

It was a rhetorical question. Lady Aertes knew very well which reality would be their base and their home for more than 10,000 years to come. She looked at the universe, the galaxy, the solar system and then the planet they’d land on in order to gain a new shape and return to the fight.

The tiny rock flew from her feet to her taloned hand. She raised it to the level her eyes would have been and grinned to reveal a full row of sharp, gleaming white teeth. Elegantly, she flicked her wrist and the pebble flew from her hand to the Cosmos, through time an space towards its destination: a tiny red planet.

“To Daibazaal! Oh, and your collective name shall be… Voltron!”

All five souls in the pebble agreed that it was a very stupid-sounding name.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, really. _Really._ That's my headcanon, until the series explains things. Because, honestly, the whole "there is a giant robot which knows its name" is a scary and ridiculous thing, if you think about it.


End file.
